I find it useful to take a step back and see how my students are naturally using the technology and what their thoughts of it are. Here are some reviews from my Advanced level ESOL students.

Lexipedia (There is also a Spanish Lexipedia site): Type the word you want to know and it will give you the definition, the part of speech and related words. It gives colors that show the parts of speech and relationships to fuzzynyms, synonyms, and antonyms. This site has six languages, but no Arabic or Chinese. (reviewed by Mo and Karl)

Shahi: This site has very easy definitions with simple examples. Just type the word, and you can get the meaning of words with visual photos. The best quality of this site is that I can understand new vocabulary even if I cannot catch their meanings by the text definition because of the useful pictures. I think there is one small problem. Sometimes the wrong pictures appear. I strongly recommend this site. (reviewed by Ryan)

Wordia: On this site you can put the word and see the videos that complement the meaning of the words. The best quality is that you can understand the meaning of the words and improve your skills because you can listen to the word in context. A first drawback is it´s incomplete. I put the word “drawback” and they don´t have video for this word. The second is that the process to get to know the word is long. (reviewed by Felipe)

Other applications: I’d like to experiment and have my students make videos such those on Wordia to share with future students. What are some ways you or your students use these types of online dictionaries?

*This is the second in a series that outlines a few online dictionaries and vocabulary games to give a flavor of what is available out there. Feel free to pass on additional quality vocabulary sites that are not included in our Students tab and tell us how they are useful. Stay tuned for some upcoming posts including a guest post about Wordsift and some online vocabulary games. Here is a link to part 1 in this series. Thanks to all of my students for their reviews and good discussions this term!